In November, voters approved a 15-year renewal millage for the libraries, but the approved ballot language does not allow the new funding to start until December 2025 which means:
“There’s no tax funding for the library currently for fiscal year 2025 and since that’s 90% of our funding, we have this issue on the August ballot.”
Executive Director Lance Werner says the issue with the 2023 millage dates occurred inadvertently, but results in the need for KDL to ask voters for a one-year millage of 1.1 millage to fill the funding gap. Without it:
“We’d be forced to make some pretty drastic cuts to our services in 2025 and we’d have to scale everything back dramatically and then basically start over in 2026.”
So, what exactly happened?
“The short story is we’re investigating into how this actually happened and that’s where we’re at right now, but the focus of course is really on the August ballot. We are investigating it and we hope to have some clarity around it as we move forward.”
The election will be held August 6th.
